


The Shining Sun

by WinterDusk



Series: Have Tesseract, Will Travel [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-09 08:07:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18634171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterDusk/pseuds/WinterDusk
Summary: The [SPOILER] skids to a stop at Loki’s feet.  Loki, not being entirely stupid, picks it up.





	The Shining Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so hopefully fairly obviously, there are Endgame spoilers in this. Quite a few of them. Read at your own peril.
> 
> Dedicated to the rat in the van that re-started it all.

With the slightest of sounds the tesseract skids to a stop at Loki’s feet. For a second – for _only_ a second – he cannot believe that the universe would be so accommodating. Surely it has to be a trick of some form. A trick beyond the barely-disguised time-looped Stark and whomever his hidden accomplice might be. But – and this is key – even if it _is_ a trick, Loki’s far from certain how falling for it can make his current situation any worse.

Case in point, the man currently cheerfully electrocuting his newfound ally is hardly nursing warm, fraternal feelings for Loki. Indeed, if Loki remains in his once-upon-a-time-brother’s custody he’s going to be returned to a realm that he has lost his place in; be forced to kneel a hypocrite who labelled Loki a trickster for lies and sleight of hand magnitudes of order lower than his own misdirections; and to a mother who-

Loki _really_ doesn’t want to face his mother clad in chains.

That said, objectively, remaining with the mortals is more or less guaranteed to be an even worse outcome than going ‘home’. Maybe not a worse outcome than he’s already experienced in his years with Thanos, but, considering his master’s designs upon the stones in this realm, there’s no guarantee that one span of torture won’t, delightfully smoothly, transition into the other.

With such possibilities ahead of him, Loki picks up the tesseract, because he’s not stupid. He flees.

#

It doesn’t take Loki long to realize that something is very wrong with the realm he’s emerged into. For a while he thinks that the strange, watered-down feeling he gets when brushing against the universe’s pulsing Seidr is entirely a product of his own, rather beaten and bruised, thoughts. Being flipped hither and thither by a hulk, whatever that monster may prove to be, has shaken loose more than a few of the barbs Ebony Maw wove into his mind.

Not that such an explanation excuses Loki’s continued absence from his master’s side. No, in light of his loss of the mind stone, Loki should, even now, be bearing the tesseract back to Thanos in a desperate bid to save his own neck.

The problem is, Loki’s fairly certain that, even with the tesseract, being one stone down is enough to sign his execution warrant.

So he uses the tesseract to flee via a few more locations – places that barely blur through his senses before he wills them gone again – to give himself a little breathing space. Then he passes a few more realms because of Heimdall. And, well, Heimdall must be aware of Loki’s existence; Odin certainly sent Thor quickly enough when Loki returned to Midgard.

Funny that the Allfather never sent Thor to Loki while he writhed in the mad titan’s grasp. Nor thought, over the months, to build a safety net to catch his wayward ‘son’s’ fall through the void. It would have been nice not to have been discovered, broken and helpless, by Thanos’s people.

Except that Thanos would have killed Thor.

Besides, it’s already all done. He _was_ discovered, Loki reminds himself as he _finally_ lets himself sink into the soft moss of a far-distant glen. Situated in the most comfortable, pain-free place he’s visited of late, Loki starts to work on the bindings around his wrists. They chafe every bit as much as Loki’s knowledge that, manacles or not, he has no freedom. For where can he go? To Thanos who will slice his mind and his body into tiny ribbons until he begs for death? To Asgard and its too-bright prisons? Or simply to flee forever and a day in the futile hope that he’ll stay one step ahead of everything.

He extracts himself from his gag just in time to laugh at the pathetic hopelessness of his situation. For who can flee beyond the gauntlet’s reach? And Thanos _will_ assemble the gauntlet; he’s too brutally driven to fail.

Loki will never outlive that genocide.

For a moment a thought flitters, light as a butterfly, that if he only took the manner of his death into _his own_ hands, then maybe… But his belief that he thought death preferable to dishonor has been long since disproven by the time he has spent groveling before Thanos’s monsters in an attempt protect his own hide. No. Suicide’s not the way out for him.

Maybe if he went to Odin? To Thor?

But they would only die the sooner for it. Compared to the might of Thanos they are achingly doomed to failure. Better to let even half of Asgard survive than to crush the realm against the madness Loki has unwittingly discovered.

There will be no glorious battle. Better he rests now and flees further in the morning.

Decision made, Loki falls into a fitful sleep. He wakes several times in fearful terror for his life, but, when morning comes, finds himself still quite alone for the first time since... The void must have been the last time.

Hungry and uncertain, Loki takes stock of his situation. The hunger, at least, can be dealt with. Reaching into his timeless pocket dimension, he draws forth one of Asgard’s famed golden apples. They’re a snack he’d packed for some jaunt or other many centuries past, then never needed to retrieve.

Biting into the apple’s firm, soft flesh sends forth the taste of sunlight and forgiveness; Loki yearns to trust the apple’s deception.

Licking its sticky juice from his fingers, Loki takes stock of his other possessions: several knives; a few old books on more arcane magical theory, held against a dull evening listening to Thor and his companions feast; and yet more apples. And the tesseract.

Really, he’s been every bit the arrogant fool he’d once accused Thor of being! All the opportunities in the universe to secret away stores against future misadventure, and had he taken the opportunity?

The apple has, mercifully, addressed the gnawing hunger in his belly. What it doesn’t do is make the air feel less thin or the fabric of reality feel less worn. There’s something seriously wrong with either him or the realm. While he has some space, it might be wise to figure out which.

#

Alas time, study and calling out to the Norns reveals that neither Loki nor the realm are at fault for the thin nature of Seidr here. Rather the answer is worse. Loki should be getting used to bad luck followed by worse.

No, the problem here is the _entirety of reality_.

Loki’s looked at the soul of the universe in every manner possible. He’s gazed deep into the depths of the tesseract. He’s taken water from a pool in the dell, using it to scry into the nature of matter in this reality. He’s sacrificed a small bird-like creature to invoke the Norns and received a rather jarring response from them.

He’s also thought. A lot. Thor always did rather underestimate how much contemplation and calculation went into the weaving of Seidr.

The answer to this weakened reality is bleakly, consistently, irrespective of analysis technique, always the same. The air here – the Seidr here – truly _is_ thinner than Loki’s used to. That stems in the fact that he’s no longer in reality’s main universe, but rather currently resides in a splintered, frail off-shoot from it. A mere branch diverging from the healthy tree.

Presumably there’s another him in existence out there somewhere, never knowing there’s a problem. Well, beyond Thanos, the Chitauri, Odin, Thor and some rather ticked-off mortals.

Loki’s perfectly willing to believe that the whole placement of himself in this second class reality is his own fault. He _knew_ before he picked up the tesseract that the universe was having a good laugh at his expense. Now here it is, the universe shunting him off into some sort of sidelined existence, where even the vigor of reality isn’t as strong as he’s used to.

Loki is, understandably he believes, less than charmed by his fate.

He does consider, both carefully and at length, whether or not he should find the ‘other half’ of his reality, for want of a better phrase, and see if he can knit the two pieces back together. After all, if he’s currently sitting in a reality that he took the tesseract _to_ , then it stands to reason that there’ll be a mirror universe that he took it _from_. And if they can recombine…

The portents and omens don’t seem able to balance for that. Typical! But if the universe thinks that Loki’s just going to sit here and _wait_ in a faded multiverse…

#

Staying ahead of trouble is easier than anticipated with the tesseract. Apparently an all-powerful artifact has some uses. What it doesn’t do, however, is let Loki travel from one branch of reality to another. No, that takes not-inconsiderable input from Loki.

Entirely achievable input as it transpires, and the next few months find him diverting the infinity stone’s power to entirely different purposes to move them from one splintered reality and into another. The tesseract buzzes every time that he crosses a boundary, interacting with the in-universe variant of itself, but its power doesn’t seem curtailed or diminished, so Loki ignores the fact. Instead he focused on the structure of the universes. It turns out that there are rather a lot of them. It does rather make Loki wonder exactly how many beings have been wondering about breaking bits off reality.

What remains beyond his reach, however, is a return to the main universe. Just as branches from a tree grow out towards the sunlight of their own future, so too do these secondary realities diverge from the main trunk. Although maybe it would be more true to imagine the workings of some great underwater coral, than a tree, for in places the branching universes touch or merge, creating a path for the determined to tread should they but see clearly.

The problem is that passing time keeps everything flowing _forward_ , down the branches and further from the main reality. And the further Loki goes, the more challenging the task of getting back. It’s making him rather fractious; he’s full of concern that he’ll even _forget_ the feel of Seidr as rich it should be.

It’s a worry that doesn’t leave him at his most rational. Really, he knows that he’s worked magics to understand this multiverse that he shouldn’t have. Cast spells that would make mother’s smile grow pinched and heavy.

Thanos has degraded Loki to make a tool of him. Why shouldn’t Loki degrade himself for his own benefit?

Still, the rituals have left him spent and shaking; dazzled by months of focus on the arcane to the neglect of the physical. It’s hardly the best of states to be in when the Norns finally grant him clear vision.

There’ll be another splinter. One in 2014. If Loki can step into that splinter as it forms… Because it’s an impossible reality; one that will splinter again and loop back into the main reality. For there’s a wild card in it: as an infinity stone is removed, thus birthing the first branching reality, one of the beings from the original timeline _will remain_. Will remain and will interact with the beings of the splinter timeline in such a way that the branch will _itself_ splinter, driving that splinter back into the main timeline where it terminates. In short, there will be a stable loop through time involving both main and branch timelines. If Loki can coordinate it so that he’s along for the ride…

There’s just one, rather immense, downside: the resulting main timeline will contain two Thanoses.

With this revelation Loki loses what little he’s eaten that day, and spends the rest of the month in serious contemplation as to whether a return’s even worth it. As it transpires, it’s a foolish decision for Loki to work himself up over and the answer should have been obvious from the first. Regardless of the danger, the terror and the risk, there’s no possible existence in which Loki can imagine ever choosing to live with a withered connection to magic.

#

For all that he’s made his decision in principle, there are still a great many details to be worked out, and yet Loki nearly bodges them. First was the manner of _when_ to go to the looping universe. Arriving too late risked missing the formation of the loop, leaving Loki without his ride back to the main reality. But to go too early…

For the splinter of the splinter that returns to the main universe is Thanos’s army. And there’s one obvious way for Loki to be carried along with them. Unfortunately, as Loki rather likes his bodily and mental integrity, not to mention his continued existence, it’s a route that’s fraught with the potential for mishap.

And thus he must balance whether he has left it too late and missed his chance, against turning himself over to Thanos earlier and never surviving his trip to the main timeline at all.

He’s so wrapped up in the dangers of that calculation and – later – enduring the torture that passes for his ticket fee, that Loki doesn’t plan all that much how he will get _off_ the ship when they reach the main timeline. Between some rather gratuitous flaying, then having the ship first erupt into flames and later disintegrate into dust around him, Loki concedes that this might have been rather a large oversight.

The disintegration magic is oddly flavored, tasting as it does of the mind stone and the space stone, but also of _more_. Loki would be worried about that, and about the fact that, apparently, the six infinity stones are tasting him as well to confirm whether he, too, should be disintegrated, but he’s rather drunk on the sensation of rich, heady air around him and a reality that doesn’t feel tissue thin.

Then the ship’s gone, though Loki himself remains, and the air is most definitely thin again. Loki falls a long way.

#

Loki doesn’t remember landing. He does remember waking, which is rather painful. It is, alas, not the first such landing he’s experienced and, compared to falling through the entirety of a planet’s atmosphere after over a year in the void, doesn’t set the scale for Loki’s ‘worse ever experiences’.

He can’t have been unconscious for very long, because when he comes to the air is still choked with dust. Loki decidedly _does not_ want to think about _who_ he might be breathing in. Yet it must have been a day or so after the battle; long enough for his injures to start to heal.

Distantly Loki can hear search teams looking for survivors. Flashing back to his, admittedly brief, war with Earth and the mortals’ response to it, Loki doesn’t find much wisdom in waiting around to be rescued. Rather, he summons the tesseract and moves.

#

Later he’s not entirely certain how he arrives at the beachside resort or where exactly it’s located. Pain always does leave his memory hazy. However, casting an illusion over his form, several day’s bedrest, and a good meal of golden apples later, and Loki feels like a new man. Strolling along a lovely seaside promenade, Loki takes in the sea air. It’s decidedly bracing.

Although perhaps his new vigor comes simply from having found his way back to the main timeline.

Or maybe it’s the knowledge that he’s _finally_ safe again. That, no matter how he feels, there’s no need to sleep fitfully or to escape from one realm to the next as quickly as the recharging of his Seidr will permit. Thanos: dead. Who would have imagined? It would appear that the crazy mortal, Stark, did triumph after all. If Loki had known as much when they’d met, maybe he’d have accepted that drink. Even toasted Stark with it.

Since waking Loki hasn’t bothered following the news much. The pertinent points are clear to see. _His_ Thanos – the one he hitched a ride with from 2014 – is dead and dust; lost to the combined efforts of Earth’s Avengers. And this main timeline’s Thanos seems – despite Loki’s concerns about having to run from two mad titans – to have died years ago, apparently after succeeding in enacting his masterplan to disintegrate half the living universe.

Despite expecting that obliteration, the lived reality of it leaves Loki glad he’s come in at this late moment and is able to look around himself and see the evidence of such ill undone.

Watching the mortals scurrying back and forth, frantically trying to re-integrate people vanished five years prior, Loki finds himself hoping, slightly perversely, that his mother was one such lost and reclaimed. He wouldn’t like to think of her pining, not even over Odin, during the course of the so-called snap.

Thor obviously survived. Loki has heard his name mentioned in passing.

Maybe Loki should drop in on Asgard – heavily disguised, of course – and see to mother’s health? It might be reassuring. Something to help ease away years of terror and adrenalin. A nice and soothing five minutes. He’d go right now, it’s just that he might be back in the main universe, but there’s something…

Loki forces his disquiet away.

Mother’s fine. Thor’s fine. Asgard’s fine. That the distinctive resonance of his adopted realm is missing from Loki’s awareness is meaningless. Doubtless it’s another of Odin’s devised punishments; a different form of banishment.

Loki hates lying to himself.

Instead he gazes out over the realm’s softly surging seas and wonders where to move on to next. Ahead of him there stretches a sandy beach filled with groups of families and friends and punctuated by stands selling foodstuff. To a certain mindset, it could be idyllic, but Midgard has never appealed to Loki.

Where will be welcoming? Where will be safe?

A sharp burst of laughter sounds from one of the groups on the beach. It’s a hard, mocking noise and, instinctively, Loki looks over. But it’s directed not at him; not at his weaker battle skills nor his interest in womanly spellcraft. These mortals appear to be looking at a newspaper. “Good riddance,” one says, in their local Midgardian language, “He’s no good like that.”

Another agrees, “Who’d have thought we’d ever see the day?”

It’s an everyday enough interaction, and one Loki could just walk on past. But he hasn’t spent the last two years frantically listening to the smallest flickerings of fate to neglect the Norns’ singing now.

Crossing the sand, he looks down upon the group. “May I borrow that?” He asks, hand impetuously extended.

The newspaper reader just smiles at his audacity and shrugs, “Sure. Chuck it in the trash when you’re done, will you, and save us the walk?”

The lead article on the page is yet another unnecessarily sensational recap of Thanos’s overthrowing. There’s a large photo of Midgard’s mightiest heroes. It takes Loki more than a moment to figure out just what it is that he’s meant to be looking at.

#

Midgardians, like Asgardians, have libraries. Like other sentient beings throughout the galaxy, they have information nets, though admittedly on some rather primitive devices. Loki uses neither to trawl for the news he wants. Rather he goes back to the hotel he’s staying at, his cash not yet found to be mere illusion, and closes his door. Leans back against the door.

Then he takes a deep breath. It shudders more than it should.

His second breath is steadier.

At length he crosses the room, sits on the bed and attempts to gather his thoughts. Thor. What had happened to Thor?

Well, it’s hardly any of _Loki’s_ concern. Thor _hates_ him. Loki made sure Thor hated him in the battle of New York and-

Thor looked-

Which is none of Loki’s business. It certainly doesn’t indicate that there’s anything wrong with Asgard or-

Loki leaves to the hotel room, his mind even more curiously blank than when Ebony Maw first dug through it; maybe more shaken than he has been since the first time he saw his hands turn blue. The door clicks shut behind him, a strangely final sound, and Loki could wait for the elevator, but he takes the stairs – slowly – instead. Takes the stairs slowly then skips a few floors with the tesseract because-

He doesn’t know why.

He walks into the hotel lobby and over to the concierge.

“Good afternoon, Mr Coulson. How may I help you?” The concierge smiles, but there’s an uneasy look in the way that their eyes flicker over him, which causes Loki to realize belatedly that he’s still holding the newspaper clenched in his fist. His fist is trembling.

“The battle,” Loki says, when really he wants to say ‘Thor’. “What can you tell me of it?”

“The battle? But everyone knows.” It’s a current enough topic, and the concierge looks thrown by Loki’s question. Maybe Loki is meant to know every little detail, like some fanatically interested and worshipful mortal? Then that uncertain smile clears to surprising sympathy. “Oh, I’m sorry, Mr Coulson. I didn’t realize you were one of the vanished.”

Which is, oddly, a tale Loki can work with. He makes how own lips smile, projecting uncertainty as hard as he can. “I saw the photo.” He spreads the newspaper in explanation. And then, because apparently he has lost all his skill for subtlety, “I met Thor once.”

“Oh, it’s sad, isn’t it?” He’s told, though he sees more interest than sorrow in the gaze he meets. “Still, it’s presumably a good thing that he’s gone off planet, isn’t it?”

Is it? Loki wants to ask. Surely Thor had comrades here? Isn’t he best off near to them? “What happened?”

The concierge shrugs, “Well, he seems to have lost the plot after killing Thanos the first time around and-“ Loki loses focus on the rest of the words.

Outside the sea can just be seen; bright sunlight glinting from its cresting waves. Loki can hear seagulls calling over the whirl of the ceiling fans. His hands twitch, fidgety, wanting to chart out shapes of power and fate. And, in its pocket dimension, Loki can hear his tesseract softly singing to its twin in this realm.

Thor killed Thanos.

Not _Loki’s_ Thanos. Not the Thanos of 2014. But the monster from the here and now. Thor killed him. Thor put an axe through his head. Thor cut off his arm. Thor hacked open his ribcage.

Loki is dizzy and dimly aware that the concierge is, presumptuously, leading him over to a sofa, rambling all the while about heat and stress and needing to stay hydrated as though unaware that Loki is a god.

“Except you actually are unaware.” It’s his own addled words to the concierge that snap Loki back to reality. It’s a reality entirely changed from the one that he left mere heartbeats before. For Thor – Loki’s annoying, arrogant, irresponsible older not-really-brother – _actually did it!_ He killed the monster. And, okay, it wasn’t quite right or quite enough or not always and every time, but-

Loki has been _so afraid_. There’s been no hope for him at home; no forgiveness; no safety.

Except there had been, if only he’d asked for it.

He scrambles to his feet and bats the concierge’s assisting hands away. “I’m checking out,” he informs them, and activates the tesseract.

#

Loki gives himself time.

Thor’s clearly been through a bit of a rough spot, but he’s still Loki’s older brother, and Loki’s far from certain that his sort-of-return will be welcome. He needs a little pause to brace himself against his own disappointment and Thor’s near-certain wrath. He needs to make sure he’s not going to cause a scene nor make a fool of himself.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are, thankfully, every bit the posturing idiots that Thor normally prefers to fall in with. As such, they are loud, have preferred watering holes, and aren’t exactly difficult to track down.

Loki makes certain he’s leaning on the bar, face nonchalantly angled away from the entrance, when they arrive at the establishment on Seven-Alpha.

From the corner of his eye, he studies them. Thor’s laughing. It’s the first thing Loki notes. Laughter always suits Thor well, for he gives it his all. He does as much here: head thrown back, platted beard wagging, voice booming, new belly shaking, all to amplify the effect. Norns! Loki hadn’t realized how he’d missed him!

Loki had been – not worried, definitely not worried – _aware_ of the possibility that maybe Thor hadn’t been well looked after. That maybe he’d been lonely and isolated. That maybe he’d appreciate seeing someone familiar, even if that someone was just Loki.

It’s clearly a false assumption.

Loki turns away, raising a glamour.

It turns out he isn’t fast enough.

“Loki.” The word is soft. Loki shouldn’t have heard it over the raucous sounds of the bar save that it’s _his name_ and Thor has been calling it out all Loki’s life. Loki would hear it even walking the halls of the dead.

Attempt at a dignified retreat obliterated, Loki drops the glamour and turns to face his consequences.

Thor has somehow crossed the entire room in Loki’s moment of weakness. He comes to a stop barely an arm’s reach away and he’s not laughing any longer. His eyes, one now bracketed by scars and changed in both colour and form, are heavy with storms. Looking into that gaze, Loki knows for sure that there’s a fist coming. More to the point, that he deserves it and that it’s a fee he’ll have to pay if he wants a chance to…

Loki doesn’t know what it is that he wants a chance for here. Only that he’s been running and afraid for so long, when he should have stopped and spoken to his brother. Should have offered Thor the chance for the two of them to fix things, together.

So maybe that’s what he’s paying for now.

Thor’s arms come up and Loki can’t react quickly enough. There’s contact and he loses his balance. But not to be sent crashing to the ground in pain and humiliation. Instead he’s pulled in close; as close as ever he was when he plunged that knife into his brother’s ribs. Loki’s _so_ close that his fingers must skim that old wound as he raises them to brace himself, and yet Thor doesn’t so much as flinch.

Instead Thor buries his face in Loki’s hair and shakes. Loki realizes that he’s weeping.

The newspaper photos hadn’t been flattering to Thor and it’s impossible to miss the truth of his situation when held closely as Loki is. A wild, woolly beard is pressed against the side of his face, while Thor’s belly is huge and warm against Loki’s front. Thor himself is stooping awkwardly; spine curved over to pull Loki in. It is… disconcerting.

But so _soft_. Thor has always been hard planes and lines. Perfect, if brutal, shapes that Loki feared his own sharp angles could be shattered against. But this… Thor’s strength remains and yet it’s an embrace that cocoons Loki rather than crushing him.

Loki closes his eyes. Then he wraps his own arms more tightly around his brother and just holds on. Distantly he’s aware that someone mutters, “Oh great. Does this mean we’ve picked up another A-hole?”

For the first time in a long time, it feels like he’s found safety.

**Author's Note:**

> I spent far too much of Endgame waiting for a closing scene such as the one just written. Was I the only one?


End file.
